Damsel Under Stress

Marcia came over and patted me on the head. “Our Katie is an old-fashioned girl. And a smart one. Better to be sure of the situation before you get in too deep.”



Gemma rolled her eyes.” Just don’t be so smart you miss the fun. Now, any costume plans for you?”



I shrugged. “I was thinking of using those red shoes, maybe doing a Dorothy outfit, assuming I can find a blue gingham pinafore.”



Gemma and Marcia looked at each other. “Tell me she didn’t just mention dressing as Dorothy,” Gemma said. She then turned to me. “This is not a Halloween carnival. It’s a New Year’s Eve masked ball. You will not do anything cute or sweet. You’re going to have one of the hottest guys there. You must do sexy. But good idea to use the red shoes. Let’s see what else we can do with them. Oh, I have an idea.”



She disappeared to the back of the closet. There were times when I wondered if our closet had a spell on it to expand it from within. It shouldn’t have been able to hold Gemma’s extensive wardrobe, let alone Marcia’s and my clothes. Gemma returned with a red satin dress and one of my red shoes. “The reds aren’t a perfect match, but it’s not too bad.” When she held the dress up against herself, I saw that it had a pointy tail coming off the back of it. “The horns that go with this should be in the accessories box over there.”



“But if that’s your dress, it won’t fit me,” I said. Gemma was taller than I was, and although she was slimmer, she also had more curves. It really wasn’t fair.



“Try it on,” she ordered.



It turned out to be good that I was several inches shorter than she was, for the dress came to mid-thigh on me. On Gemma it must have been indecently short. It was rather formfitting on me, except in the chest area, where there was extra fabric. “That’s okay,” Gemma said. “That’s why they make Wonderbras.” She stuck a horned headband on me and turned me to face the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door. “And voilà, a she-devil. I can’t decide if you should wear fishnets or seamed stockings. Maybe seamed fishnets. We’ll have to see what we can find. You’re gonna knock your guy’s socks off.”



As I twirled my tail and looked at myself in the mirror, I was almost looking forward to the party even though I was starting to have a nagging suspicion that it was a recipe for disaster.



Instead of heading to the office the next morning, Owen and I went straight uptown to Times Square. “How will I know that my immunity is still gone?” I asked him while we waited for an uptown train.



“Do you see anything odd?” he asked as my necklace hummed.



“No.”



“Your immunity is gone.”



He was remarkably chipper, which I chalked up to our first truly successful date. “I figured out my costume for the party,” I told him, taking his hand and leaning against him. “Now we have to find something for you.”



“Oh really, what is it?”



“It’s a surprise.” A train pulled into the station, and he ushered me on board.



We got off the train at the Times Square station, then made our way aboveground. The impact of all the giant signs and lights was somewhat diminished during the daytime, but it was still pretty splashy. My necklace had intensified its hum, but I couldn’t be sure exactly what was causing it, as I’d noticed magical people in Times Square before. It was one of those parts of town where things were so crazy, magical people could do whatever they wanted and nobody would notice anything weird, so long as nobody dropped all the magical veils in the area at once on a relatively quiet night. The locals had on blinders and the tourists would think it was just another one of those odd New York things. Besides, some of the nonmagical things going on there were weirder than anything the magical world had to offer. No magical person would be crazy enough to stand outside playing guitar in just his underwear in the dead of winter, for example.



“What do you see?” Owen prodded when we reached the traffic island where we’d studied the Spellworks ads on Christmas night.



“It looks like Times Square, the way it usually is. Some soft drink ads, some computer ads. No magic ads.”



“So it’s like the other veilings he’s done, hiding the magic behind the last ads that were there. That does make you wonder if he really is paying for the space.”



“The billboards alone wouldn’t be cheap, so he still needs money. But we might not be at multinational corporation levels of financing. Just one good backer—say, Sylvia—might be enough. Maybe things aren’t as bad as we thought. Knowing Idris, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he gets bored with this in a week or two and moves on to something else.”